I am a leadership advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs and Boards, author of "Hacking Leadership" (Wiley) and "Leadership Matters" (2007), the Chairman at N2Growth, a member of the board of directors at the Gordian Institute and recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the top leadership thinkers globally. I am also a syndicated columnist and contributing editor on topics of leadership, innovation and problem solving. I have been married for nearly 30 years and am a proud father and grandfather.

15 Ways To Identify Bad Leaders

7. Sing a little Kumbaya: While love and leadership are certainly two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence, I can assure you that rarely does great leadership exist without love being present and practiced. In fact, if you examine failed leaders as a class, you’ll find that a lack of love, misplaced love, or misguided love were a contributing cause of said failures, if not the root cause. Empathy, humility and kindness are signs of leadership strength – not weakness.

8. One size fits all leadership style: The best leaders are fluid and flexible in their approach. They understand the power of, and necessity for contextual leadership. “My way or the highway” leadership styles don’t play well in today’s world, will result in a fractured culture, and ultimately a non-productive organization. Only those leaders who can quickly recognize and adapt their methods to the situation at hand will be successful over the long haul. Think open-source not proprietary, surrender not control, and collaborate not dictate.

9. Lack of focus: Leadership is less about balance and more about priority. The best leaders are ruthless in their pursuit of focus. Those leaders who lack the focus and attention to detail needed to apply leverage and resources in an aggressive and committed fashion will perish. Leaders who are not intentional and are not focused, will fail themselves and their team. Leaders who lack discipline will model the wrong behaviors and will inevitably spread themselves too thin. Organizations are at the greatest risk when leaders lose their focus. Intentions must be aligned with results for leaders to be effective.

10. Death by comfort zone: The best organizations beat their competition to the future, and the best leaders understand how to pull the future forward. Leaders satisfied with the status quo, or those who tend to be more concerned about survival than growth won’t do well over the long-run. The best leaders are focused on leading change and innovation to keep their organizations fresh, dynamic and growing. Bottom line – leaders who build a static business doom themselves to failure.

11. Not paying attention to the consumer: Leaders not attuned to the needs of the market will fail. As the old saying goes, if you’re not taking care of your customers, someone else will be more than happy to. Successful leaders focus on the consumer experience, which in turn leads to satisfaction and loyalty. The best leaders find ways to consistently engage the consumer and incorporate them into their innovation and planning initiatives. If you ignore, mistreat, or otherwise don’t value your customer base, your days as a leader are most certainly numbered.

12. Get Invested: Leaders not fully committed to investing in those they lead will fail. The best leaders support their team, build into their team, mentor and coach their team, and they truly care for their team. A leader not fully invested in their team won’t have a team – at least not an effective one. Never forget the old saying, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care – words to live by for leaders.

13. The “A” word: Real leaders are accountable. They don’t blame others, don’t claim credit for the success of their team, but always accept responsibility for failures that occur on their watch. Most of all, leaders are accountable to their team. I’ve always said that leaders not accountable to their people will eventually be held accountable by their people.

14. It’s the culture stupid: The lesson here is that culture matters – forget this and all other efforts with regard to talent initiatives will be dysfunctional, if not altogether lost. Don’t allow your culture to evolve by default, create it by design. The first step in cultural design is to be very, very careful who you let through the front door. People, their traits, attitudes, and work ethic (or lack thereof) are contagions. This can be positive or negative – the choice is yours. The old saying, “talent begets talent” is true, but talent that aligns with culture will produce better results than talent that does not.

15. Show some chutzpa: Leadership absent courage is a farce. I’m not referring to arrogance or bravado, but real courage. It takes courage to break from the norm, challenge the status quo, seek new opportunities, cut your losses, make the tough decision, listen rather than speak, admit your faults, forgive the faults of others, not allow failure to dampen your spirit, stand for those not capable of standing for themselves, and to remain true to your core values. You can do none of these things without courage. Courage is having the strength of conviction to do the right thing when it would just be easier to do things right.

The moral of this story is leaders need to be honest, have a demonstrated track record of success, be excellent communicators, place an emphasis on serving those they lead, be fluid in approach, have laser focus, and a bias toward action. If these traits are not possessed by your current leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in for a rocky road ahead…

Which of these traits stand out to you? Do you have any other signs of ineffective leaders worthy of mention? Leave a comment and share your insights with others…

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Here’s a powerful way you can become a powerful leader: Powerful leadership messages start with powerful words!

Using POWER WORDS just might boost your leadership ability! Using POWER WORDS on your website, emails, resumes and sales letters can boost your response! Here’s “The top 10 power words according to Yale”

As an occasional writer on education, I once had the good fortune of covering a history ed conference at the New-York Historical Society, featuring David McCullough and high school students. Mr. McCullough addressed the question of what makes a good leader, focusing on George Washington in particular. One of Washington’s attributes that has stayed with me was and is the first President’s ability to surround himself with first-rate staff. Also, as Mike Myatt, too, suggests, McCullough maintained that Washington had the virtue of humility – of key importance, he said, to a good leader. Thank you, then, for the chance to spread the word.

Trait No 8 reminds me of the ad for wash room seats “one size fits all”! Analysis of leadership is also in the gut. If you appoint a leader, it’s because you want to avoid being dis-appointed yourself. As team culture, on an all-embracing platform creates energy and motivation, this will be as noticeable as someone walking naked down the high street. I noted the 15 areas which you have outlined and all of them can be started with the words “lack of..” Etc. What you are really saying is that you have listed 15 traits which are elements of the combined parts of a leader’s profile, and what we really ought to be doing is looking out for what they don’t do, as opposed to what they do do! I guess when we have identified what is lacking, we have to tell them…… Now that does take Chutzpah!

Kudos for a superb article which addresses critical requirements of great leadership! I just recently left a position with a company due to the non-leadership shown by the head of the department. Sad to say, this manager failed miserably on all accounts. The leadership exhibited was that of Eternal Chaos. Decisions were made, then reversed, far too often. Several changes were incorporated that made the work easier for a few, but in reality were non-productive overall. The resulting stress regrettably effected my health. Five months have passed with no regrets about my decision to leave.

Some people assume that being in a leadership position means they can build their own empire. They bring in people who are ineffective or incapable of doing the task. These people join the company and create chaos.

It is mentioned in the military strategy guide of Zhuge Liang, prime minister and military strategist of the state of Zu during the 3 kingdom period of Han dynasty. Promotion of a person is by contribution and credit, if one is promoted without and contribution while the other does all the work. It causes dissension, soon the team suffer from cohesion and good people leave.

A leader also must genuinely care for the staff who work for them. Happiness in their work leads to productive environment and less people falling sick. A leader need to truly step up to the plate, a manager is not a leader by default. Many thought that being promoted to manager they are leaders, but never step up to the plate.

A person succeed as a leader is when staff will follow you wherever you go to, willingly put themselves to do more or harms way. That is leadership, of cos I am not referring to brainwashing or the terrorist ways of doing things.

Hi Mike. This is a great article, it’s the first article on Forbes that I have read from beginning to end! I do have one question rather than a comment. What do you make of a leader that is wrong but refuses to apologise to an employee and gives the reason that he/she does not apologise?